


Burn

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2009 [12]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Deaths, Monster of the Week, Morality, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:04:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl. Just a cynical little girl. But so, so human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Shulik requested Supernatural/Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, John & BtVS girl, _Cynical but still human._ \- You do not get a cookie if you can guess which girl I chose. I might be getting predictable in my old age. 
> 
> 2009 repost.

\+ 

It’s three am and the glaring hospital lights make him feel more tired than he actually is, which is quite a feat. He hasn’t gotten more than a little nap in the past forty-eight hours, most of which he spent tracking a damn wendigo through the woods.

Which is actually pretty par for the course. What isn’t though, is Summers, who somehow found him in the middle of nowhere and refused to go away. They first met when he came to town last week. She was already on the case, he was new to it. Courtesy demands that he should have left her to her hunt but one look at her and he couldn’t. The girl weighs eighty pounds, tops and looks like a light breeze can knock her over for good. Letting her go up against a wendigo sounded like a phenomenally bad plan. 

So he pulled out the drill sergeant voice and the chauvinist crap and tried to get rid of her. She snorted, eventually flipped him off and went right on doing her thing. He tried to be faster than that little girl, to find the fugly before her to he could kill it without the added strain of having to save some wannabe Girl Scout hunter. 

Alas, no such luck. 

She found him in the woods and she stuck with him like a bad smell.

It was her that figured out the wendigo was following them. It was also her that killed it after he got flung around a clearing by it. He owes her an apology for thinking her weak, if he can ever manage to actually form the words. 

But that’s not why he’s here, now, when he should be in bed, sleeping off the hunt. He’s here because what brought him to town in the first place were two families gone missing on a camping trip.

Seven people.

They found them all in the fugly’s lair, six of them in pieces. The last one, a girl of barely fourteen, in still in surgery now and he can’t walk away for some reason. He already failed six other people. Two mothers, two fathers, two kids. All dead. Because of him. Because he was too slow, too weak, too whatever.

One out of seven is a survival rate of roughly fourteen percent. 

Why does he do this job anyway? Why does he keep hunting, keep trying, when he never manages to save anyone, never gets any closer to that demon and never brings his own family anything but pain?

Summers comes down the hall, two Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee in hand. She’s dirty, rumpled and she glows under the artificial lights, seeming utterly relaxed as she hands one of the cups to him and sinks into the chair next to his. 

“I just talked to a nurse,” she says, by way of starting a conversation. “She says Marcy should be fine. They’re still stitching up a few bits, but it looks good. Doctors are optimistic.”

She hums a bit at the end of her speech, seeming content. 

“You sound happy,” he fairly accuses.

“I am. Why wouldn’t I be? The kid’s okay.”

“And six other people are not.”

She looks at him, honest confusion in her gaze. “Yeah, but Marcy _is_. She’s alive, John.”

It annoys him that she keeps calling him by his first name, so familiar. Few people do these days. He’s Winchester or ‘that creepy guy over there’, never John.

“One,” he tells her, sharply, “We saved one of seven. We failed.”

Agitated, Summers stands, brushing a dirty strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “I dare you to walk up to that girl,” she snaps, pointing down the hall toward where the doctors are still working on her, “And tell her that. Tell her that her life doesn’t count, that you’d have rather saved the others. Tell her!”

A few feet away, a nurse sticks her head out of the break room and glares at them. John feels the urge to stands, too, to not let that slip of a girl loom over him. He resists. “I didn’t say that,” he informs her coldly. “But we lost six people.”

Summers shakes her head, suddenly deflating. “No, John. We saved one little girl.”

For some reason John can’t fathom now, maybe never could, she seems to think that is enough. One girl. Six people. He tries to weigh one against the other in his mind and comes up no less cynic, no less angry at himself and the world than before. 

She sighs, shakes her head and leans against the opposite wall, her coffee forgotten in the chair next to his. He takes a sip of his own and leans back, trying to relax.

The lights make his eyes burn.

+


End file.
